Re: libxml bundling

On Thu, 8 May 2003, Zeev Suraski wrote: > It's our job to make the installation of PHP as easy and not-time-consuming > as it could possibly be. The whole "whose responsibility is this" approach > is, IMHO, the wrong way to think about it. Requiring the sysadmin to read > docs, bump into configure errors, install/configure additional libraries, > does not fall in the category of being helpful or easy. Bundling it, > does. PHP is not out there to win computer science awards of excellence, > it's there to work and solve problems. I have to disagree with this. It is not the job of the software (PHP) to make itself easier to install. We're not an installation system, we are a web development language. Thought this is really just another form of the "whose responsible" discussion. The end result of bundling is now PHP will become responsible for keeping upto date snapshots of libxml. If a really scary bug is found in the library, it now becomes PHP's job to ensure that all new downloads use it. Is it really our job to ensure system security? Or are we mearly trying to provide an interface to an established set of functionality found on the system? > The obvious question that comes to mind is "where do we draw the > line?" IMHO, XML is such a basic requirement that this particular case is > a no brainer. I would be pretty aggressive when it comes to allowing > additional bundles - it's no coincidence that we're bundling very few > libraries, and it should stay that way, but built-in XML support should be > one of them. I'd be one to argue that no external dependencies should be bundled. But I have been one for a minimalist release for a long time :) >---------------------------------------------------------------< Dan Kalowsky "I'll walk a thousand miles just http://www.deadmime.org/~dank to slip this skin." dank-nom@aps-deadmime.org - "Streets of Philadelphia", kalowsky@php.net Bruce Springsteen